Zipcar policy applies a penalty to changes made less than 3 hours before a reservation. This seems a fair and good policy. But a penalty is also charged in three situations that don't seem right:

1) If I change the end time of a reservation more than 3 hours before that end time.

2) If I switch cars, because a more desirable car has subsequently become available.

3) If I call to cancel the reservation after returning early. I'd be happy to "release" the car to some other Zipcar user, free of charge. But getting hit with a penalty kinda takes all the fun out of it :-).

Discussion?

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2003

Answers

I made a suggestion similar to your #3, in an earlie post:
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl? msg_id=00AmsO
I was contact by Zipcar, who seemed interested in the idea and were looking at ways to implement it.

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2003

Hmm. I agree that #1 and #2 make a lot of sense--but I can see a lot of potential problems with the third situation. It seems to fall along the same lines as the fee some restaurants or hotels charge for cancelling reservations at the very last minute--in theory, you're doing people a favor because you're making space available, but if no one takes that space, then you're costing Zipcar money because you committed to the car, thereby preventing others who might have reserved it had that time been available a day or two earlier from using it. (Hence the fee, to cover this.) Perhaps there's some way to set this up so that you pay for the full time (without an additional penalty) in this situation unless someone else reserves that time, in which case you pay only for the time you used? (Sounds like a programming nightmare, but it does seem that, where possible, this should be encouraged!)

-- Anonymous, June 02, 2003

Unlike private ownership where almost all costs are fixed, the whole idea of Zipcar is that you only pay for what you use! This is the mantra of carsharing. By not allowing members every opportunity to eliminate the fixed costs related to using automobiles, they undermine their very own reason for being. Besides, on most occasions it is nigh impossible to accurately predict, to the minute, how long you might need a car for, and the service should do all that it can to recognize this fact. A fact that stems from the way we are rightly accustomed to getting around. There is a certain degree of spontaneity to existence that any successful mode of personal transportation must accommodate. Private automobile ownership has been so popular because it is perceived to do this well. I submit that private ownership would be significantly less popular if it involved frequent punishment. I would probably stop walking if each step caused enough pain. So too should Zipcar strive to be spontaneous and pain free. Scheduling, the issue raised in these posts, introduces a panoply of concerns that make using Zipcar awkward, cumbersome, and at times painful to use compared with its main competitor, private ownership.

Take the issue raised here: without knowing exactly when a trip will resolve, (and it is impossible to eliminate the uncertainty surrounding this), most people schedule, to varying degrees, more time than they think they will need. This is a form of insurance that they are purchasing. The extra money paid might be an effective way to defray the costs of rental, but there is something wrong with a system of personal transportation that requires this form of insurance in the first place. Who cares if in the short run it means more revenue? The system is a poor one if its viability depends on retaining members who are willing and able to overpay to use it. Unfortunately it is difficult to find a solution to this matter (and it has much greater complexity and many more facets than the treatment here indicates) since the overage that people routinely pay to use Zipcars (who doesn't do this?)could be for Zipcar the difference between profitability and going out of business. How would they go about addressing this problem within the framework of scheduling? It’s impossible. The best thing would be to get rid of scheduling altogether.

For Zipcar, certainly where it’s at is providing a cool, innovative service to the community which is really what they’ve largely succeeded in doing. It would be ashamed if something as mundane as scheduling adversely affects this. If they wind up deriving a healthy chunk of revenue from selling insurance for late penalties (which is essentially what overage payment is even if you haven’t thought of it like that) it just seems kind of inappropriate. The whole late penalty/cancellation penalty thing has succeeded up to this point only because responsible people tend to blame themselves when things go wrong as in the case of being late for returning a Zipcar or needing to make a change in scheduling (certainly a result of carelessness!). But the purpose for which the mode is used simply demands flexibility. If you use Zipcar to pick up kids, do shopping, drop off laundry, whatever, it is not possible to do everything down to the minute. You need more flexibility than the rigid carsharing schedule allows. At the same time, people should not have to pay for more than they use. When the service makes this a reality, more people will use Zipcar for more of the types of trips that cars should be used for. Scheduling has its place for some things no doubt, (planes, reserving rental cars, hotels, dentist appointment, etc.) but it will ruin, or at the very least, make less viable anything that requires the level of spontaneity and flexibility that we rightfully expect in personal transportation.

Fortunately, it is possible to eliminate scheduling. The solution will be in combining in a novel way the wireless internet, GPS, and PDA’s.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 2003

Regarding the objection to #3. If I return a car early, I still expect to pay for the full reservation time.

But there's no reason that the car should sit, unused, in the parking space. I'm offering, as a courtesy to other members, to let some other user take the vehicle. Zipcar would, in effect, be double-billing for the same hours. -Bryce

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2003

You can do that now, though, can't you? I've shortened reservations before, which frees the car up for other members while I pay for the time. And I think if you shorten it more than three hours before the end, you only pay half price for each hour past the three-hour mark, don't you?

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2003

I was thinking that the typical insurance payment would be for about 1/2 to 1 hour, which at almost $10.00 an hour is bad enough. I can't imagine that someone would miscalculate the duration of their rental by more than 3 hours! Who can afford to do this? Figure out a way to toss scheduling, (which results in paying for more time than you need to avoid stiff late penalties)and you make carsharing price competitive with ownership. You make it something not just for the privledged, but for everyone (which is what has to happen if it's going to make a difference. Nevertheless, the adoption of the service by this subset proves an important point to all those who avow the supposed eternal, unbreakable love relationship that Americans are supposed to be having with the automobile. Status can be as much about not owning as owning.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2003

In NY at least Zipcar's main competition is not buying a car, its renting a car from a regular service like Avis or Enterprise. These companies rent by the day. Zipcar is filling a niche by allowing people to rent by the hour. So while if you own a car you can manage your car time down to the minute I don't think Zipcar wants to get down to managing minutes. This means if you reserve a car for longer than you need it then tough cookies, these things happen.

To handle #1, #2 and #3 above, the next stage in Zipcar technology should be e-mail notifications about already reserved cars becoming available, or being returned early. If you go to reserve a car and its already reserved, it would be great to "fake book it" to let Zipcar know you have interest in that car at a certain time. Then if someone cancels their reservation or returns the car early the e- mails can go out to interested parties (with a button to click on that would automatically bring up the reservation screen for that car). If someone returns a car early and then someone else rents it after getting the e-mail, then the first person should not pay for that time.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2003

i agreewith all of you

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2005